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Practice to Deceive
Practice to Deceive
Practice to Deceive
Ebook440 pages6 hours

Practice to Deceive

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This New York Times bestseller—from “America’s best true-crime writer” (Kirkus Reviews) and the author of The Stranger Beside Me—is a shocking tale of greed, sex, scandal, and murder on an isolated and eerie island in the Pacific Northwest. The basis for the Lifetime movie event Circle of Deception.

With more than 50 million copies of her books in print—from her chilling personal account of knowing Ted Bundy to sixteen collections in her #1 bestselling Crime Files series—Ann Rule is a legendary true crime writer. Here, in Practice to Deceive, Rule unravels a shattering case of Christmastime murder off the coast of Washington State—presented with the clarity, authority, and emotional depth that Rule’s readers expect.

Nestled in Puget Sound, Whidbey Island is a gem of the Pacific Northwest. Accessible only by ferry, it is known for its artistic communities and stunning natural beauty. Life there is low-key, and the island’s year-round residents tend to know one another’s business. But when the blood-drenched body of Russel Douglas was discovered the day after Christmas in his SUV in a hidden driveway near Whidbey’s most exclusive mansion—a single bullet between his eyes—the whole island was shocked. At first, police suspected suicide, tragically common at the height of the holiday season. But when they found no gun in or near the SUV, Russel’s manner of death became homicide.

Brenna Douglas, Russel’s estranged and soon-to-be-ex wife, allowed him to come home for a Christmas visit with their children. The couple owned the popular Just B’s salon. Brenna’s good friend Peggy Sue Thomas worked there, and Brenna complained often to her that Russel was physically and emotionally abusive. Peggy Sue’s own life has been one of extremes. Married three times, hers is a rags-to-riches-and-back-again tale in which she’s played many roles, from aircraft mechanic to “drop-dead gorgeous” beauty queen as a former Ms. Washington. But in 2003, her love affair with married guitarist Jim Huden led the two Whidbey Island natives to pursue their ultimate dreams of wealth and privilege—even at the expense of human life.

Unravel the tangled web woven by Russel Douglas’s murder in Practice to Deceive, a heart pounding true-crime tour de force.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherGallery Books
Release dateOct 8, 2013
ISBN9781451687378
Author

Ann Rule

Ann Rule wrote thirty-five New York Times bestsellers, all of them still in print. Her first bestseller was The Stranger Beside Me, about her personal relationship with infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. A former Seattle police officer, she used her firsthand expertise in all her books. For more than three decades, she was a powerful advocate for victims of violent crime. She lived near Seattle and died in 2015.

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Rating: 3.378947301052632 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Although I have read Ann Rule before and found her riveting, this book felt like a first draft of notes. Very incomplete and sketchy and not particularly well written. I read it mainly because my sister and brother-in-law live on Whidbey Island and he knew the victim. Not a thorough coverage of the case , I had as many questions afterwards as I did from what I knew before I read it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Amazing, the way she managed to pull together all the disparate characters in the case and make it make sense so you understood how they related to one another and to the murder committed was masterful. Extremely captivating and already passed this book to a friend to read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A true crime story of the murder of Russel Douglas in Puget Sound, Washington, in 2003. Ann Rule is the "queen" of the true crime genre and as usual, this was an excellent book with a lot of interesting information, but not so much technical info as to turn one off. If you are a true crime fan (as I am) or are familiar with the area, this is a good read.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Although the murder in question occurred on the day after Christmas, Practice to Deceive is not a holiday read. It's about a murder, after all. The murder of Russel Douglas took ten long years to solve and proves to be more convoluted than anything you'll read in crime fiction. There is a vast array of characters (and they are characters) and reams of detail that all added up to two convictions, but no real answers. Yes, two people were convicted of his murder, but the why remains elusive and this leaves the reader hanging, wanting a more substantive conclusion yet left with bits and pieces of speculation.I like some of Ann Rule's books. When she's on she writes well and has the ability to move you with her insider knowledge of the victims, but also of how the real investigation happened over extended time periods. She is able to provide a level of insight that many writers in this genre do not and this is definitely not prime time television. People get caught, when they get caught, because they say stupid things or mix up their stories or an eyewitness comes forward or someone puts two disparate pieces of information together and asks the right questions. This isn't prime-time television where where everything's wrapped up in a nice neat package with bow several hours after the murder. This is real life and it's messy and difficult and doesn't always lend itself to a tidy conclusion.The primary issue with this book is not just the ambiguous conclusion, the not knowing why this happened. Rather it's the ambiguity of the entire book with the author eliding over lives, skimming the surface. Much of the focus in on the villains, but Ms. Rule also skims over the lives of other players. My biggest complaint is that the victim remains a cipher with lots of questions asked, but never answered. Russel Douglas is a guy who got shot in the head in his car at the end of the book and this isn't much different from the beginning. Our knowledge and understanding of him is shallow, he is made tangential to the story and I found this disappointing. Not the best of her books, Practice to Deceive left me wanting something a lot more focused. Not her best.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a tangled story of tragedy and crime this was! Not exactly what one expects from Rule, no tale of a serial killer or a brutal mass slaying or even an horrific crime of passion. Here we have an assassination style style murder of a regular Joe that took ten years to solve. The victim was an ordinary guy, loved by most, lead a normal life and hardly anyone had anything to say against him. Unfortunately, because of this we don't get to know much about him; the book is most certainly about the weird, tangled lives of the killer (s). Rule's investigative reporting uncovers a trail of tragedy for the Stackhouse family beginning with the brutal rape and murder of the mother of six young children and ending with the devious connivings of a step-daughter of that family decades later. The book reads like a novel and was quite the page turner. I don't usually read this type of crime preferring the ones I mentioned at the beginning, but there were just so many twists and turns with this investigation, and the lives of the people involved in the crime were so soap-opera like that if it weren't real it would hardly be believable in a novel. I'd never heard of this case before, so I had the added advantage of not knowing how things were going to turn out, causing an element of suspense. I love Rule's writing. She tells these true crime tales so well, with respect to the victims and their families and though this is not one of her best books it is an incredible read of a tangled web that left authorities frustrated for an entire decade.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I am really torn on rating this book. This book was a quick and interesting read - Ann Rule excels at suspenseful yet concise narrative. So, in that regard, I'd give this book four stars. It's not as good as some of Rule's other books (specifically "Stranger Beside Me" or "Everything She Ever Wanted"), but it's still engrossing in terms of pace and intrigue. My bigger issue with this book is the author's biased commentary. Peggy Sue (one of the central characters in the book) was already unlikeable without additional commentary by Rule. (SPOILER ALERT) Rule writes, "It was almost as if she had her own 'bucket list,' and setting up and getting away with murder was high on that list." There were other comments like that in the book - purely speculative and frankly not really all that believable. This particular character seemed primarily motivated by money, so the "bucket list" comment was just weird. Also, Rule honed in on Peggy Sue as the mastermind behind the crime. She was definitely involved, but I thought Rule focused her vitriol on Peggy Sue and not on Jim Huden, the idiot who actually pulled the trigger. Rule seems to blame Peggy Sue for being conniving and persuasive without putting enough responsibility on the man who let another person convince him to commit murder. In fact, Rule even suggests that Huden would never have killed had it not been for Peggy Sue's influence. That may or may not be true, but Huden had previously admitted that he wanted the chance to get even with his late stepfather by physically confronting someone who was similarly abusive. So it is unclear whether Peggy Sue is as cunning as she is made out to be in this book or if she was already dealing with a loose cannon who wasn't hard to persuade. I am certainly not defending Peggy Sue, but I think the author's hatred for the criminals in this case is unevenly distributed, and that was consistent throughout the book. That, plus the fact that the story isn't among the best Ann Rule has written about, is why I ultimately settled on giving this book three stars.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'm a huge fan of Ann Rule but this was probably my least favorite of hers. It's not that the book is bad but more the case itself just isn't anywhere near as thrilling as the others.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not my typical genre, better than some true crimes I have read. I think I liked how much effort the author gave to each person background, but some of it was too much on information that didn't seem important to the current crime. In the end I was more invested i the Stackhouse family tragedies and their reactions to it. It just made it more difficult to follow the murder and how they were all connected. This is a sad series of events.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Enjoyed the book. Showed how much is missed on tele crime shows.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Sad that I’ve always liked Anne Rule but feel this was very poorly written and not well researched at all...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A true crime story of the murder of Russel Douglas in Puget Sound, Washington, in 2003. Ann Rule is the "queen" of the true crime genre and as usual, this was an excellent book with a lot of interesting information, but not so much technical info as to turn one off. If you are a true crime fan (as I am) or are familiar with the area, this is a good read.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Great story but poorly written, which is a surprise as I am usually a big fan Ann Rules books.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The one big thing that stands out for me in this book is the narrative voice Mrs. Rule uses. Unlike many of the true crime books I have read this book feels more like mystery fiction then an accounting of events. In fact, if I was not already familiar with Rule and her style I might have thought this was indeed fiction, and well written fiction at that. She is expert at painting a scene and giving you a real feel for everything that happened.Similarly all of the people surrounding Douglass’s murder are well written with enough personality on the page that they read like well-crafted characters. You really have to applaud Detective Plumberg’s doggedness at following this case and chasing down the hard to find leads. Equally you can’t help but hate many of the people in Douglass’s life. At every point I was hoping to see his wife get some kind of comeuppance for her so cold and greedy personality. You could almost feel how contemptible she was through the book. This is the real strength of the book. Rule really makes you connect, either positively or negatively, with everyone you meet.There is one big flaw however. Several of the people you encounter have interesting backstories, and Rule cannot help but digress to them. That in of itself would not be such a bad thing except that some of these digressions are incredibly long and only tangentially affect your understanding of the main events in the book. At one point she spends 30+ pages giving a very detailed biography of one of the major players in the book which is completely skipable. Not that those events are uninteresting by themselves but it completely sidetracks the main story and puts the breaks on an otherwise well passed story. The important pieces from these peoples backgrounds could be laid out simply in a page or two and then let the reader return to the story they are invested in. What makes this worse is she does just that with several other character backstories, meaning she is perfectly capable of reigning in these side journeys. Someone reading this book for the first time can skip these sections and loose little understanding or enjoyment.

    1 person found this helpful

Book preview

Practice to Deceive - Ann Rule

PART ONE


The Body in the Woods

CHAPTER ONE


WHIDBEY ISLAND, WASHINGTON, IS one of the largest islands in the continental United States, a vacation spot for some, home to sixty thousand residents, and a massive duty station for navy personnel. Ferries and the Deception Pass Bridge transport visitors and residents alike to this idyllic body of land that floats on Puget Sound with any number of passages, inlets, bays, and other waterways.

Whidbey is a study in contrasts. The sprawling Whidbey Island Naval Air Station is in the town of Oak Harbor at the northern tip of the forty-seven-mile-long island. It is the premier naval aviation installation in the Pacific Northwest and the location of all electronic attack squadrons flying the EA-6B Prowler and the EA-18G Growler. It is also home to four P-3 Orion Maritime Patrol squadrons and two Fleet Reconnaissance squadrons that fly the EP-3E Aries.

South of Oak Harbor along Highway 520, there are smaller, homier towns: Coupeville, the Island County seat, Greenbank, Langley, Freeland, and Clinton. Although supermarkets and a few modest malls have opened in the last several years, much of Whidbey Island is composed of hamlets, bucolic pastures, evergreen forests, marinas, and a good number of lavish waterfront estates built by people from the mainland.

Visiting much of Coupeville is akin to stepping back in time; the tree-shaded streets are lined with any number of restored houses more than a hundred years old.

From some island locations, there are views of Seattle rising out of a fog-smudged mist, but mostly Whidbey Island is still a place to get away from the stresses of city life. With so much waterfront and so many parks, Whidbey draws tourists in every season. And it is a great place to raise a family with good schools, friendly neighbors, and a true sense of community.

A number of high school graduates move off-island as they search for a quicker-paced world, but they almost always come back for reunions and holidays to catch up with family and old friends.

There isn’t a lot of crime on Whidbey; bank robbers prefer spots where they don’t have to wait for a ferry to make a clean getaway. There are, of course, some sex crimes, and a murder from time to time. When law enforcement officers do have a homicide to investigate, it tends to be out of the ordinary, even grotesque. Island County detectives have investigated explosive cases that made headlines in Seattle, and sometimes nationwide. Colton Harris Moore, the Barefoot Bandit, a brilliant teenage lawbreaker who went from robbing cabins to stealing airplanes and boats, began his crimes on Camano Island where he grew up—but he was tried on Whidbey Island.

Like all insular areas, Whidbey Island has active gossip chains of communication. Illicit liaisons seldom remain secret for long. There aren’t many No-Tell Motels or discreet cocktail lounges where lovers can hope to escape prying eyes. Frankly, some of the posher restaurants and health clubs have been headquarters for swingers and key clubs, and they aren’t all that secretive. With the advent of the Internet, gossip spreads more rapidly with every year that goes by.

During the last days of 2003, the chains were buzzing. Some residents were fascinated with a violent mystery and some were just plain frightened.

CHAPTER TWO


WAHL ROAD IS ABOUT four miles from the small Whidbey Island town of Freeland, and a hodgepodge of homes and buildings line the narrow roadway. Some are sparsely furnished old cabins with few luxuries, and then there are newer cabins, upscale houses, and even a few lodges worth a million dollars or more where access to those walking to the beach is cut off by iron gates and impenetrable shrubbery. As Wahl Road wends its way parallel to the part of Puget Sound known as Double Bluff, it passes everything from a monastery to trailers tucked far off into the woods.

Many of the residences are getaway retreats for people who live in Seattle, Everett, or Bellingham, Washington—or even in Vancouver, British Columbia. Since many of the places are vacant during the winter months, neighbors who are full-time residents keep an eye out for strangers or any sign of suspicious activity.

Nicole Lua and a woman friend—Janet Hall—left Lua’s Wahl Road home at about three in the afternoon on the day after Christmas 2003, and headed toward the Double Bluff beach area where winter sunsets are often spectacular. There was a narrow parklike area they could access via the road or by cutting through neighbors’ yards.

It was raining and threatening to rain more, but it wasn’t that cold for December, about forty degrees, which would drop to just above freezing during the night. Many of the homes in their neighborhood had already turned on their Christmas lights, and beams and shards of color sliced through the rain and fog. As always, the day after Christmas didn’t seem nearly as joyful as the day before Christmas.

As the two women cut across the thickly forested property at 6665 Wahl Road, Nicole noticed a bright yellow SUV parked in a small cleared space at right angles to the dirt driveway leading back to a cabin. She knew that her neighbors who lived there—the Black family—had gone to Costa Rica for the Christmas holiday, and she was a little surprised to see a strange vehicle there. It was an idle curiosity, however, since nothing seemed to be amiss, and there was a light on in the cottage kitchen. The Blacks sometimes invited friends to stay at their vacation spot.

The two women didn’t walk near the yellow car. When they headed back from the beachfront, it was four thirty and full dark during this week of the shortest days of the year. Now they could see that the yellow Tracker was still there, and its pale dome light was on. Caution told them not to walk closer to a strange car in the dark on their own. If the car had a mechanical problem or was out of gas, the driver had probably called for help or walked up Wahl Road toward town.

They decided they would look for it the next day—if it was still there. If it was, they would call the Island County Sheriff’s Office and ask that a deputy check it out.

Before they did that, however, someone else noticed the yellow car that was almost hidden by the fir trees beside the long driveway. On the early Saturday afternoon of December 27, 2003, Joseph Doucette, who was a schoolteacher in Bellingham, Washington, left one of the cabins on the Blacks’ property with his sons to take a walk.

One of the Blacks’ sons was Doucette’s pupil, and the teacher, his wife, their two sons, and her sister had happily accepted an invitation to spend Christmas in the cozy cabin.

With all the excitement of Christmas and the somewhat close quarters of a cottage, the little boys were bouncing off the walls. Doucette rounded them up and they headed out for a hike with their dog, hoping they could get rid of some of the pent-up energy.

The Bellingham teacher saw the yellow SUV backed into a grassy spot between two fir trees. Its dome light was still on. His oldest son noticed that the passenger door was open.

I thought I should go up and shut the door, Doucette recalled. To keep the battery from draining and rain from getting in. I called out to anyone who might be in the car, but no one answered.

With an eerie sense that there might be something really wrong, Doucette quickly led his boys back to their cabin and told them to stay inside while he checked on something. Once his sons were safely out of the way, the teacher jogged back to the SUV.

As he moved to shut the car door, he glanced in and froze in shock. There was someone inside the Tracker. The man behind the steering wheel appeared to be asleep, drunk—or perhaps even dead. Half hoping he might only be imagining the worst, Joe Doucette looked closer. The silent figure appeared to be buckled into a seat belt. He saw that the man was slumped over with his head down and his fists tightly clenched.

Backing away, Doucette knew he shouldn’t touch anything, and he hurried back to his cabin to call 911.

He told the Island County dispatcher that he’d noticed something that looked like goo coming out of the man’s forehead. That led him to believe that the stranger might be dead.

Doucette had no idea who the man was or what had happened. He stayed beside the yellow vehicle, waiting for the ICOM (Island Communications) operator to dispatch someone who might know how to determine that.

*  *  *

ISLAND COUNTY SHERIFF’S SERGEANT Rick Norrie was working the 1 P.M. to 8 P.M. shift that Saturday afternoon, the supervisor of patrol duties in the south sector of Island County. At 4:26, ICOM dispatched him to investigate a possible death at 6665 Wahl Road in Freeland. He arrived at the scene eight minutes later, the first of many sheriff’s officers and emergency responders to head for the unexplained/possible death.

He didn’t know what he would find. As with any call concerning a body, neither Norrie nor anyone else knew exactly what might have occurred. He could have responded to a heart attack victim, to someone who had suffered an accident, to a drunk sleeping it off, or to a suicide. The latter was the most likely; the holiday season is depressing for many people, and anyone who staffs crisis lines or works in public safety knows that suicides peak around Christmas and New Year’s.

To get to Wahl Road from the shopping center in Freeland, most drivers take Fish Road from Freeland’s shopping center, turning left on Woodard to its end, left on Lancaster Road, and then right on Wahl. Double Bluff beach was on the same side as the address given, and Mutiny Bay was across the road beyond a row of houses there.

Sergeant Norrie drove slowly down the narrow dirt driveway. He spotted the vehicle in question and saw that it was a yellow GEO Tracker, license number 128-NXQ. As he got out of his patrol unit fifteen feet away, Norrie immediately saw that the GEO’s front passenger door was open, and the dome light illuminated the front seat area. He could see a white male with short brown hair slumped over the steering wheel.

As he approached the open door, Norrie saw that the driver had apparently suffered serious head trauma. His forehead bulged with some kind of matter and large globules of blood. The man’s flannel shirt was soaked with drying red stains and Norrie noted that the driver’s-side door panel was also splattered with what appeared to be blood.

Still, Norrie wasn’t sure yet if the man was alive and unconscious or deceased. He moved to the driver’s window, which was lowered about four inches. Not really expecting a response, he spoke aloud, identifying himself as a sheriff’s deputy, as he reached in to touch the silent man’s right shoulder.

He felt no life at all; rigor mortis was well established, leaving the dead man frozen in his position behind the wheel.

Paramedics Darren Reid and William Brooks from Whidbey Island Fire Station 3 arrived a minute or so after Norrie did.

I think he’s gone, Norrie told Reid. He’s in almost full rigor.

Reid checked and confirmed what Norrie said.

The obvious expectation was that this violent death would prove to be a suicide.

The bleak spot in the woods was soon crowded with responders. A few minutes later, Officer Leif Haugen of the Langley Police Department and Deputy Laura Price of the sheriff’s office joined Norrie. They had passed some EMT rigs and an ambulance leaving the address given, but there were no sirens. That probably meant that whoever was down the driveway was dead.

Haugen and Norrie began to seal off a crime-scene area with yellow crime-scene tape while Price started taking photographs.

She saw that the dead man was probably in his early to midthirties. He had sandy-blond hair, and he obviously hadn’t shaved for a few days. The coagulated mass of blood seemed to be from a wound right in the center of his forehead at the bridge of his nose. Oddly, he had fragments of blue glass in his hair. Wondering at first what they were, Laura Price found the lens from sunglasses on the passenger side resting near the seat. Then she spotted the blue frame from the sunglasses on the driver’s-side floor.

It had been a gloomy few days and she wondered why anyone would be wearing sunglasses.

She saw that rain and some tree debris had blown into the passenger side, and noticed an envelope and other mail lying on the floor there, along with cans and paper cups. She looked in the backseat of the GEO; she saw no blood—only clothing, shoes, and trash—but she couldn’t see exactly what was there because of the dim light, and she didn’t want to disturb them.

Looking through the back window, Deputy Price observed a snow sled with coats lying on top of it.

The dead man had bled heavily and his plaid shirt, crotch, and thighs were drenched with it. The seat belt had blood on it, but it wasn’t latched.

His hands were also covered with blood and the steering wheel had grip imprints from his stained fingers. Price saw that he wore white socks with flip-flops, but the left-foot sandal was missing.

Moving around the vehicle, Laura Price took many photographs with 35-millimeter film.

Once the scene was contained and preliminary photos were taken, Rick Norrie asked Haugen and Price to begin a tentative canvass of nearby houses to see if anyone had heard anything unusual coming from the Blacks’ property in the past few days.

*  *  *

WHEN NICOLE LUA SAW blue lights whirling atop several deputy sheriffs’ cars a few doors down, she walked over to see what was going on. She hadn’t called the sheriff after all, but now she felt a sense of dread. She had probably been correct in assuming that there was something eerie about the parked car.

Whoever the dead person was, Nicole explained that she thought the body probably had been there the day before, too. She and her friend had noticed the SUV there almost exactly twenty-four hours earlier. It didn’t belong to anyone that she knew on Wahl Road, nor had she seen it before.

Who was the dead man? And why had he ended up in a small parking area off a narrow road that was shadowed by towering trees? No one driving by on Wahl Road would have seen the yellow Tracker. It seemed that he, or someone else perhaps, had chosen this hidden spot for just that reason.

The vehicle’s glove box was open. Later, neither officer could recall which of them had opened it. With extreme care, they removed the vehicle’s registration that lay on top of papers there. With a flashlight, they looked at the registered owner’s name.

It read Russel Douglas, age thirty-three, with an address at the Mission Ridge Apartments in Renton, Washington, a city southeast of Seattle. Norrie wondered what could have been so bad that a man this young would have shot himself.

It would take a postmortem exam to be sure, but it appeared that Douglas had sustained only that one wound—right in the middle of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. The bullet must have penetrated his sunglasses at that point, sending the broken glass all over.

Norrie noted a shell casing between the driver’s seat and the door. It looked to be from a .380 caliber bullet. The bronze casing would at least tell them what kind of gun they were looking for, although it was unlikely they would find it in the dark, even with the mass of auxiliary lighting the sheriff’s department was bringing in.

In the driver’s door itself, he saw a green and yellow sealed box of 30/30 caliber rounds. Maybe there were two weapons. Norrie didn’t open the box, but waited for detectives to arrive.

He did, however, continue to look for a gun that had fired the fatal shot into Russel’s forehead.

He couldn’t find it. Depending on the ejection recoil pattern, it might be in the dark rear seat of the Tracker, or it might even have flown out the passenger door, only to be swallowed up in the undergrowth of salal, sword ferns, kinnikinnick, and huckleberries.

Rick Norrie called Island County’s detective commander, Sergeant Mike Beech, advising that he was standing by on what appeared to be a suicide. He asked that one of the county’s detectives respond, as well as County Coroner Robert Bishop.

At 5:35 P.M., Detective Mike Birchfield pulled up to the scene and the death investigation was turned over to him. Less than an hour had passed since Sergeant Norrie first arrived at the death scene, but it seemed so much longer.

Soon, the pullout beside the driveway was almost as bright as day as the auxiliary lighting showed up and was turned on.

Lieutenant Harry Uncapher, an evidence technician, and Deputy Scott Davis joined the investigators working in the rain. Uncapher bagged the shell casing, papers, documents, and everything that might become vital physical evidence, and he sealed and labeled everything so the chain of evidence would be sacrosanct. He recovered a Nextel cell phone from the left visor, a black fanny pack with a checkbook, more personal papers, and identification documents.

Scott Davis took measurements to triangulate points that would show the precise spot where the Tracker sat. Later, he would draw the scene to scale.

Detective Birchfield asked Rick Norrie and Leif Haugen to extend the crime scene by roping off both an inner and outer circle around the Tracker to be sure that no one could accidentally step on items of possible evidence. He asked Laura Price to start a log that would show the names of anyone who might come inside the tapes, along with the times they arrived.

This wasn’t the first unattended death any of the officers had encountered, but it was still shocking. The sheer amount of blood on the dead man and in his car was appalling.

Detective Mark Plumberg, who was even more of a detail man than Birchfield, arrived at the scene. He had never had occasion to go to Wahl Road before. The two seasoned investigators would work this strange case together, although Birchfield would be the lead investigator in the beginning. They had no idea just how long the trail would be before they found out the baffling story behind the body in the woods.

It was probably better that they could not see what lay ahead, how long it would take to solve the puzzle of Russel Douglas’s death, or the tragedies the future would bring.

Indeed, one of them would not live to see the final denouement.

The two detectives saw that the Tracker’s keys were still in the ignition. They measured the driver’s window and saw it was lowered by 6.5 inches. Although it had been unhooked, the driver’s seat belt was still partially wound around his torso. It looked as if the dead man had rolled down his window to speak to someone. He might have been in the process of removing his seat belt before getting out of the car. More likely, Plumberg felt, someone had unbuckled the belt after he was shot.

Rick Norrie said he had looked for the gun to no avail. As they searched for the missing gun and failed to find it, Birchfield and Plumberg regretted that any of the first patrol officers on the scene had touched the yellow SUV. Although the sodden grass around the car probably wouldn’t have given up much in the way of footprints, they would never know, because several people had walked there by now.

And it was definitely beginning to look as if this might not be a suicide after all. Unless they found the gun within a reasonable distance from the Tracker, this could very well turn out to be a homicide. People who shoot themselves in the forehead cannot then fling the weapon many feet away.

Experienced detectives know that the manner of death should be viewed first as homicide, second as suicide, then accidental, natural, and finally, as undetermined. Because this had seemed to scream suicide, the scene wasn’t as untouched as Birchfield and Plumberg would have liked.

Mark Plumberg remembers standing on the edge of Wahl Road, and looking all around him. Something niggled at him.

"I saw how deserted it was. Totally out of easy access except for the few families who lived there in the winter. I said to myself ‘This is ridiculous! Why would the victim have come way out here—he had to have been lured out here by someone.’

Mike Birchfield said he had that sense from the beginning, too.

Even on that first night, Mark Plumberg was curious about something he noted. A small, partially coagulated pool of blood was next to the dead man’s hand, and that hand would have been directly below the gunshot wound on the bridge of his nose. It seemed to him that that odd stain should still have been on the victim’s hand if he had remained in the same position since the time of the shooting.

But it wasn’t, Plumberg said. I thought then—and I still do—that someone had attempted to move the body for some reason—possibly looking for the bullet casing. That made me doubt even more that we were looking at a suicide.

Still, working with only artificial light, the two detectives couldn’t say for sure where the casing was.

They would have to look for it in the morning.

PART TWO


Russ and Brenna

CHAPTER THREE


CORONER DR. ROBERT BISHOP released the body and it was taken to Burley’s Funeral Chapel to await autopsy. The Tracker would be towed to the Island County Criminal Justice Center to be stored in a locked sally port until the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab criminalists could process it.

It was after ten when Mark Plumberg and Mike Birchfield cleared the scene, leaving reserve deputies Bill Carpenter and Jay Geiler to provide security in case anyone—a killer or merely someone curious—should try to get inside the crime-scene tapes.

The detective team had their suspicions and their gut reactions, but the probe was embryonic at this point; the two uniformed officers who had done the initial canvass of nearby houses had located one possible witness who sounded as if she had seen the dead man’s car the day before.

Diane Bailey, who lived a short distance from the Blacks’ property where Russel Douglas was shot, gave a statement about a boxy, small, bright yellow SUV that was driving west along Wahl Road, as if the driver was searching for an address. That had been sometime between 11:30 A.M. and 1 P.M. on the twenty-sixth. She hadn’t paid that much attention to it until she saw the same vehicle backing out of her own driveway.

It looked as though he’d seen my red Volvo parked there and realized he had the wrong address, she said.

Ms. Bailey hadn’t had a clear view of the driver, but her recall did help to place the Tracker in the Double Bluff neighborhood sometime around noon on Friday.

*  *  *

MARK PLUMBERG AND MIKE BIRCHFIELD weren’t through for the night. They still faced one of the tasks that any cop hates—notifying the deceased’s next of kin. There is no easy way to break such awful news; police know that they will hear sobs and see tears or the shocked, frozen reaction on the faces of those the dead have loved and who have loved them.

Mike Birchfield knew of Russel Douglas; his wife, Brenna Douglas, had babysat with the detective’s children. Several deputies’ wives went to her beauty shop—Just B’s—to have her do their hair. That was one semilucky thing for the detectives; most residents on Whidbey Island knew each other, or they had mutual acquaintances.

And then there was the gossip line that they knew would begin beating jungle drums with both solid and mythical information within hours. They had to find Brenna soon and tell her what had happened before someone called her and bluntly gave her the news that her husband was dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

Russel Douglas might have been living in an apartment off-island, but his driver’s license gave his address on Furman Avenue in the Whidbey Island town of Langley. Mike Birchfield knew that that was Brenna’s current address. There had been rumors for months that Russel and Brenna were estranged and living apart; that could explain why Douglas had two addresses.

But they weren’t divorced.

*  *  *

IT WAS ABOUT A quarter after ten when Mike Birchfield and Mark Plumberg pulled into the driveway of Brenna Douglas’s home in Langley. There was a maroon van parked in the driveway, but there were no lights on in the house. Plumberg stayed back in the yard while Birchfield approached the front door. A large dog was in the yard, barking at him.

Birchfield shone his flashlight through the living room window, and saw a woman in a robe walking toward the front door.

That’s Brenna, Birchfield said.

She opened the door without hesitation. Squinting in the porch light, she asked, Can I help you?

Mike Birchfield showed her his identification as a sheriff’s detective and introduced her to Plumberg. As they walked into the living room, it appeared that she was ready for bed.

Could you talk to us? Plumberg asked, wondering why she would open the door so readily when she saw two strange men in her yard.

Come on in, she said, opening the door wider. What’s going on?

We want to talk with you about your husband, Mike Birchfield said as they walked in. They stood awkwardly for a minute or two before he gestured toward the dining room: Could we sit down at that table?

Brenna Douglas seemed at ease as she led them toward the dining room. She asked no questions. Mark Plumberg pulled out

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